ESG 101: Why Environment, Social, and Governance Matters Today
While most business decisions will start and end with the bottom-line budget, more boards and executives are putting corporate responsibility at the top of the priority list. This shift is occurring because we’re operating in a world that is getting measurably hotter and includes more extreme weather events–from hurricanes to wildfires—making the impact of climate change our present-day reality. Amidst a global pandemic and a long overdue social justice reckoning, it’s no longer possible to “mind our own business,” nor is it prudent or ethical. That’s why ESG has been elevated from a niche box to check to a core principle guiding company decisions.
ESG is defined as the three central factors in measuring the sustainability and societal impact of a company or business. It literally stands for “Environmental,” “Social,” and “Governance,” with each leg of the stool supporting a self-aware and transparent ethos for conducting business responsibly and prosperously in the 21st century. In a business world guided by ESG principles, “responsibly” and “prosperously” are no longer at odds, but rather necessarily entwined.
How Energy Storage, and Solar-Plus-Storage, Enhance ESG
So how does energy storage, and solar-plus-storage in particular, enhance a company’s ESG performance? In more ways than you may think:
1) Reducing Peak Demand and Carbon Emissions: To meet the electric grid’s highest periods of consumption, also known as “peak demand,” utilities often rely on natural gas peaker plants, which can quickly ramp up production to meet the needs of the grid. Those plants, however, are expensive, inefficient, and carbon-intensive. Using energy stored from the grid or solar panels during times of peak demand reduces carbon emissions because it reduces the need for supplemental generation. Harnessing energy storage—especially when paired with solar PV—can reduce a company’s carbon footprint without requiring any energy consumption reduction.
2) Increasing Grid Flexibility and Maximizing Renewables: Beyond the impact on your business, battery storage and solar-plus-storage contribute to the flexibility of the grid at large. The accelerated adoption of clean energy will continue to put increasing pressure on the grid because these renewable resources are intermittent—only generating energy when the sun shines or the wind blows. Energy storage can store these resources, making it the linchpin of the clean energy transition.
3) Increasing Environmental Equity: Individuals residing in low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by pollution from fossil fuels and have not equally benefited from the lower costs of renewable energy. Energy storage produces zero on-site emissions and can be deployed in tandem with community solar initiatives to reduce pollution levels and electricity costs while increasing electricity access. When taken to the next level, energy storage and solar-plus-storage systems can be designed in a way that benefits the land on which it sits, supporting biodiversity and enabling environmental rejuvenation.
Advancing Your Company’s Sustainability Goals with Energy Storage
The most elegant aspect of embracing battery storage or solar-plus-storage as a sustainability tool today is that the benefits extend beyond the short term. Getting involved with the technology early ensures you’ll see savings and impact (with regards to dollars and cents as well as overall sustainability impact) more quickly.
If you’re wondering whether you have to budget for a battery storage or solar-plus-storage system … the short answer is no! Convergent fully finances its energy storage and solar-plus-storage systems and shares in the savings with its customers, including Ford and Shell. We have over a decade of expertise developing industrial-scale energy storage and solar-plus-storage systems that deliver 7-figure savings to our customers over the life of the system.
How it works: Convergent finances, designs, constructs, and operates the battery storage or solar-plus-storage system. Convergent offers a pay-for-performance contract in which the revenues and shared between both parties. This financing model make energy storage and solar-plus-storage so accessible that no realistic hurdles remain.
Get Started on Your Energy Storage Solution Today
If you have aggressive sustainability targets that are challenging to meet, energy storage or solar-plus-storage can make a meaningful difference that does not require a change to operations. If you have an energy-intensive business that is looking for a partner to reduce your costs and carbon footprint at the same time, Convergent can make it easy for you.
Further, if your corporate mandates from leadership, from investors, from local regulators, or even from your customers are pushing you to improve your company’s ESG performance, battery storage or solar-plus-storage systems can get you over the finish line from the sustainability perspective while also saving the company money.
And at our core, Convergent is an ESG-focused company looking to work with aligned partners to accelerate the clean energy transition. We are happy to work with your team to determine if energy storage or solar-plus-storage is right for your needs—and we love saving businesses money on their energy bills while helping companies across the globe to move away from fossil fuels and take ownership of their clean energy future.
To get started, reach out today!
